Interpreters of Michel Foucault's 1966 Les mots et les choses have often conflated the terms 'episteme' and 'historical a priori'. This article suggests that the two terms are entirely separate: while 'episteme' refers to the configuration of thought in a given historical period, 'historical a priori' refers to the conditions of unity for a certain field of science within a given period. In his use of the term 'historical a priori', Foucault is thus much closer to Husserl than (...) has hitherto been appreciated. Keeping the two terms separated also sheds new light on the archaeological method that Foucault uses, showing that there is a procedure to get from an archive of texts to the reconstruction of an episteme. (shrink)

Předmětem studie je obecná problematika vztahu mezi obrazem a jeho referentem, resp. referentem obrazu, obrazem samým a jeho recipientem. Je-li malba principiálně intencionální v tom smyslu, že zobrazení referentu malby závisí na původci této malby a jeho přesvědčení, a je-li fotografie principiálně kauzální v tom smyslu, že se intence původce do vztahu mezi referentem a jeho snímkem promítá jen na (formální i obsahové) technologické rovině, jedná se o dva typy obrazu, předpokládající rozdílný způsob vnímání a interpretace. Je tomu tak skutečně (...) a je tomu tak nutně? Na příkladu ikony jako hraničního typu obrazu se ukazuje, že fotografie má přinejmenším potenciál dosahovat podobné úrovně psychologické iluzivnosti jako malba. Je-li tomu tak, lze snad oprávněně předpokládat, že je fotografie schopna fikčního účinku srovnatelného s fikčním účinkem malby. Cílem studie je tento předpoklad dále prozkoumat s ohledem na epistemologický rámec věci. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Foucault’s Renaissance Episteme Reassessed: An Aristotelian CounterblastIan MacleanThere seem to me to be two good reasons for looking at Foucault’s Renaissance episteme again, even though specialists of the Renaissance have given it short shrift and Foucault himself does not seem to have set great store by it in his later writings. 1 The first is that in general books on Foucault accounts of it are still given (...) in a neutral or even approving way, as though neither the concept of episteme (which suggests both that mind-sets or paradigms or epistemes are all-constraining) nor the account of the Renaissance episteme in particular (which is given a predominantly Platonic and hermetic character) require modification, if not refutation. 2 I shall suggest that although in some sense we are all prisoners of our mind-sets, there are ways in which we can escape from this prison 3 ; and with respect to the Renaissance in particular, I shall claim that Aristotelianism, not Platonism, is the appropriate context in which to see the dominant universe of discourse of the day and that this philosophy can be shown to possess the resources for escaping its limitations. To do this I shall [End Page 149] give a brief resume of Foucault’s episteme in general and the Renaissance episteme in particular. Then I shall show first, that the Platonist features which he cites as typical are actively refuted at that time and cannot be described as dominant without severe qualification; second, that the versions of Aris-totelianism widely taught in universities and schools give quite different accounts of these features; and third, that this form of thinking can be shown to have the freedom of self-critique in the very areas in which Foucault chooses to see Renaissance philosophy as both constraining and constrained.In 1969 Foucault produced his “theoretical work” L’Archéologie du savoir as the methodological systematization of his earlier historical writings, L’Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (l961), La Naissance de la clinique (l963), and Les Mots et les choses (1966). In this work man is described as a modern self-invention, fashioned from a particular configuration of knowledge and destined soon to disappear. Foucault’s history of man is a story about the way he constituted himself as a subject and then made his body, his behavior, his reason, and his consciousness the object of his study and a field to be controlled, regulated, trained, and coerced. In this analysis man’s “rationality” becomes not a faculty but an authoritarian straitjacket. What Foucault sets out to investigate is a very fundamental form of ontology but not one associated with profound knowledge; it is a superficial and finite, if largely invisible, field, which is discontinuous, not defined by the agenda of the modern state of any associated discipline, and peopled by “utterances” (énoncés) which are only graspable in their differences and their dispersion. If coagulations of these “utterances” (formations discursives) occur at all, they appear only in the form of consistent relations: the objects to which they “refer” are no more than objectifications whose scientific status cannot be established and whose meaning cannot be recovered by semantic or rhetorical analysis. In calling his previous book Les Mots et les choses, he was being explicitly ironic, for neither the words nor the things of the title have any substance to them: they are not presences but absences. The description made by the historian is remote from his object, indirect, incomplete; it describes a “preconceptual field” in which the “preconcepts” are no more than organizing operators or functions revealing relationships of dependence, processes of validation, contingent theories of truth. The “utterances” which these “preconcepts” inform come together in “discourses” which are neither systems nor mere aggregations of knowledge; archaeological history as practiced by Foucault uncovers not a “mentality” but an “episteme,” which he defines as follows:By episteme we mean... the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, possibly formalized systems.... The episteme is not a form of knowledge or type of rationality which, crossing the boundaries [End Page 150] of the most... (shrink)

En este trabajo nos proponemos, en primer lugar, reconstruir brevemente el análisis de Michel Foucault acerca de la episteme moderna, para luego analizar algunos rastros que identificamos en ciertos textos del pensador francés sobre la episteme contemporánea. A los fines de lograr este cometido, en tercer lugar, analizamos algunos textos de algunos pensadores del posestructuralismo francés y de la Mass Communication Research. Finalmente, concluimos que el acontecimiento que da lugar a la reconfiguración del saber occidental y a la (...) conformación de la episteme contemporánea está relacionado con las cuestiones del sentido y de la información, que contribuyen a delinear los contornos de las características del hombre y el lenguaje en la nueva episteme. (shrink)

The fundamental principles of the classical utilitarian school characterize this trend as an administrative and legal criminology. This had two implications. On the one hand, the motives, and ultimate causes of the behavior and the unequal consequences of an arbitrary rule were ignored. On the other hand, the role of the judge was reduced to enforcing the law, while it was up to the judge to set a penalty for each offence. At the end of the nineteenth century, these principles (...) saw the gradual emergence of another punitive episteme that had emerged as a result of the colonization of the legal space by the positive sciences and etiological action programs. This was not a planned and pre-established course, but the confluence of a series of theories and programs for penal prevention that Michel Foucault summarized as the realization that the law was increasingly functioning as a norm. Now, criminality, besides being the object of scientific interest, also constitutes the indicator of a social problem and therefore its insertion in an economy of changing power. (shrink)

L'étude de la nature et du rapport entre la doxa et l' épistèmé a retenu depuis quelques décennies l'attention des platonisants allemands. Déjà en 1877, O. Ihm publiait une dissertation doctorale sous le titre: Uber den Begriff der Platonischen Doxa und deren Verhältniss zum Wissen der Ideen. Plus récemment J. Sprute publiait également sa dissertation doctorale sous le titre: Der Begriff der Doxa in der Platonischen Philosophie. Quelques années plus tard, E. Tielsch faisait paraître un volumineux ouvrage portant le titre: (...) Die Platonischen Versionen der griechischen Doxalehre. C'est le dernier en date de ces ouvrages sur la doxa-épistémè qui retiendra ici notre attention. II s'agit de l'ouvrage de Th. Ebert qui a été publié en 1974 sous le titre: Meinung und Wissen in der Philosophic Platons. Cet ouvrage a été accueilli avec une certaine réticence par la critique tant pour sa méthode de lecture des dialogues platoniciens que pour son interprétation générale du platonisme. Nous aimerions done ici l'analyser à ce double point de vue de la méthode de lecture et de son interprétation du platonisme. Mais auparavant il nous faut dire un motsur la thèse centrale que défend l'auteur, pour être mieux en mesure de juger de la profondeur des changements que l'auteur nous suggère d'opérer dans notre compréhension des dialogues de Platon et, d'une façon plus générale, de la tradition platonicienne. (shrink)

¿Cómo conceptualizar la temporalidad? ¿Qué analítica puede inteligir su carácter inefable? ¿Dónde reside la potencia heurística capaz de dar cuenta de la experimentación de su multiplicidad? Este artículo intentará poner en valor las herramientas elaboradas por la filosofía modal de V. Jankélévitch, a fines de contribuir a la tarea de arquitecturar una "episteme de la intuición" del tiempo presente. Si antes de Bergson la experiencia del tiempo había quedado ligada a la fijación de un concepto, Jankélévitch, proseguirá el trabajo (...) de su maestro, poniendo en foco el dominio disímil de "las maneras" en las que el tiempo se vivencia subjetivamente y se experimenta con-otros. Para ello, creará nociones capaces de indagar cualitativamente un dominio complejo, fugaz e irreversible, surcado por experiencias diversas, singulares, intransferibles. Así, la sutil elaboración efectuada por Jankélévitch en las nociones del "Yo-no-sé-qué" y el "Casi-nada", devendrá aquí la puerta de entrada a este mundo en movimiento, constituido por saberes que se producen siempre de modo fragmentario, "semi-gnosis" como caracterizará Jankélévitch, visto que atienden a una intelección "intuitiva" de la temporalidad, cuya capacidad heurística sobre nuestros modos de producción de la subjetividad sin duda puede sumar un aporte a las perspectivas de la filosofía contemporánea. How to conceptualize temporality? Which analytics can understand its ineffable character? Where does the heuristic strength capable of accounting an experimentation of its multiplicity lie? The aim of this article is to bring in value the tools developed by the modal philosophy of V. Jankélévitch, in order to contribute to the task of building an architecture for an "episteme of intuition" of present time. If before Bergson the experience of time had been linked to the setting of a concept, Jankélévitch will continue the work of his master, putting in focus the dissimilar domain of "ways" in which the time is subjectively lived and experienced with-others. To affront this challenge, he will propose notions capable to qualitatively inquire a complex domain, fugacious and irreversible, marked by diverse experiences, unique, non-transferable ones. Thus, the subtle elaboration made by Jankélévitch on the notions of "I-don't-know-what" and the "Almost-nothing", will become here the entrance gate to this moving world, constituted by a production of knowledge that always occurs in a fragmentary way, "semi-gnosis" as Jankélévitch's would characterize, as it serves to an "intuitive" intellection of temporality, whose heuristic capability on our modes of production of subjectivity can definitely contribute to the perspectives of the contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Against prevailing interpretations, this article contends that Plato's Sophist and Statesman accord the sophist a kind of ‘knowing-how’ (epistêmê). In Soph. 233c10‒d2, the Visitor and Theaetetus agree that the sophist has not truth but a δοξαστικὴ ἐπιστήμη. This phrase cannot mean ‘a seeming knowledge’, for –ικός adjectives formed from verbs express the ability to perform the action denoted by the verb—here, δοξάζω. Although not a first-order, subject-area knowledge, sophistry is a second-order knowledge of how to form and use judgements (doxai). (...) Other acknowledgements of the sophist's epistêmê and the ascription to him of τέχνη, ‘craft/expertise’, confirm that the Visitor's conclusion is not to be dismissed as irony. To critics who argue from the Gorgias and from other works that Plato must consider the Visitor's conclusion an error, the author replies: 1) other dialogues do not control the Visitor dialogues; 2) the Visitor does not validly demonstrate that the sophist lacks all knowledge; 3) by admitting sensibles into Being, the Visitor and Theaetetus allow the objects of epistêmê to include things in the embodied world, even likenesses. Non-philosophers’ epistêmê in the Visitor dialogues is not implicated in the difficulties that critics have raised about epistemology in the so-called Two Worlds dialogues. On this new ontology, even the sophist, if guided by philosophical rulers, can benefit citizens by employing his elenctic expertise as Socrates did, aiding their growth toward virtue. (shrink)

Many contemporary critiques of `modernity' target a caricatured construction of `modernity-as-universalist-reason'. Such critiques are often blind to the constitutive splits and tensions within the philosophical and political horizons of modernity between a rationalist and a romanticist episteme. These critiques are therefore also oblivious to the fact that their own critiques of modernity move on a terrain heavily structured and prefigured by older romanticist critiques of reason and scientific objectivity. Some of the persistent problems in romanticist thought - the celebration (...) of authenticity and a recurrent essentialism - reappear in current post-structuralist critiques of modernity. This is particularly evident in the debates in South Asia - emerging from the subaltern studies group in India, from debates on hybridity and migration, and on post-coloniality as a critique of Western modernity. Rather than launching essentializing and totalizing critiques of `modernity-as-universalist-reason', which tend to reproduce the metaphysical fallacies of romanticism, critiques of modernity could more fruitfully unfold as concrete critiques of modern practices and institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, we intend to start from certain reinterpretations that have been made about the Saussurean construct on the langue object, taking as a basis mainly the relational notion of system, the linguistic value, to then create possibilities of dialogue with the axiological perspective of langue present in Mikhail Bakhtin. Such perspective in this author takes shape in the concept of heteroglossia and discourse genres, in which this object must be understood in terms of social and historical relations. (...) Also, in the linguistic-textual elaboration of a genre, the statements operate in relation to each other, in order to bring together and/or confront different social and ideological voices. Starting from this episteme, which sees langue and the effects that result from it as a constitutively relational object, we believe that a convergence between the two authors is possible in order to re-signify ways of interpreting the world through the science of language. (shrink)

Alors que l’épistémologie détermine les conditions de vérité du savoir, le travail « archéologique » de Foucault consiste à mettre au jour les systèmes implicites qui en dessinent la possibilité. Toutefois, ce n’est pas parce que l’individu est pris dans une épistémè contraignante qu’il est privé de liberté. Prônant l’interdépendance du théorique et du pratique, Foucault postule qu’il existe des processus de subjectivation qui, tout en faisant de l’individu un « sujet éthique », lui permettent en outre de dépasser l’assujettissement (...) qui pourtant le conditionne. Échappant à l’empire de la structure et récusant l’illusion du sujet, le concept d’ épistémè est compatible avec l’exigence d’une liberté lucide. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts episteme and doxa through the key notions of universal and necessary. These notions have played a central role in Aristotle’s characterization of scientific knowledge in the previous chapters of APo. They are not spelled out in APo I.33, but work as a sort of reminder that packs an adequate characterization of scientific knowledge and thereby gives a highly specified context for Aristotle’s contrast between episteme and doxa. I will try to show that this context introduces a (...) contrast in terms of explanatory claims: on the one hand, episteme covers those claims which capture explanatory connections that are universal and necessary and thereby deliver scientific understanding; on the other hand, doxa covers the explanatory attempts that fail at doing so. (shrink)

Retomo, en este artículo, la conocida distinción platónica entre doxa y epistêmê, hecha principalmente en el Menón y la República. Pero subrayo con énfasis particular la diferencia de criterios, de un diálogo a otro. Mientras que en el primero predomina el criterio lógico de la estabilidad de epistêmê y la inestabilidad dóxa, debida respectivamente a la concatenación (desmós) y la falta de concatenación de sus elementos, el segundo enfatiza el criterio ontológico de los objetos:la misma cosa no puede ser aprehendida (...) por la ciencia y la opinión, pues la primera concierne al ser absoluto, identificado con las Formas platónicas, y la segunda a algo que es intermedio entre el ser absoluto y el no-ser absoluto. Después de objetar que Platón no logra demostrar su división tripartita de la realidad, sostengo que la diferencia de criterios aquí analizada se debe a la ausencia de la Teoría Platónica de las Formas en el Menón. Palabras clave: Platón; Doxa; Epistêmê; Distinción; CriteriosI return in this paper to the well-known Platonic distinction between doxa and episteme, drawn mainly in Meno and Republic. However, I stress now the difference in criteria from one dialogue to the other. While in the first prevails the logical criterion of stability of epistêmê and unstableness of dóxa, owing respectively to the concatenation (desmós) and the lack of concatenation of their elements, the second emphasizes the ontological criterion of objects: the same thing cannot be apprehended by science and opinion, for the former concerns to absolute being, identified with Platonic Ideas, while the latter to something which is halfway between absolute being and absolute not-being. After objecting that Plato fails to demonstrate his tripartite division of reality, I claim that the difference of criteria hereby analyzed is due to the absence of Plato’s Theory of Ideas in Meno. KeyWords: Plato; Doxa; Epistêmê; Distinction; Criteria. (shrink)

The sixteen essays written in honour of Jonathan Barnes for this volume reflect the impressive scope of his contributions to philosophy. Six are on knowledge, five on logic and metaphysics, five on ethics. The volume ranges widely over ancient philosophy, while also finding room for two contemporary papers on truth and vagueness. Aristotle is prominent in eight of the essays; Plato, Sextus Empiricus, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and ancient Greek medical writers are also discussed. The contributors include some of the (...) most distinguished scholars of our time. (shrink)

The twentieth century saw the emergence of a new episteme of death that fundamentally revolutionized values relating to mortality and life. Previously this revolution has been seen primarily in terms of the sequestration and denial of death, but it is necessary to go farther and recognize that these are really just an aspect of the industrialization ‐the Fordism ‐ of death. This takes two major institutional forms: the militarization, and the medicalization of death. Both ensure that death is administered (...) on an industrial scale and in accord with institutional and bureaucratic imperatives and values. The total mobilization of the Great War was the prototype that revealed the potential of this approach. With the subsequent medical revolution of the middle decades of the century the approach was quickly rationalized and refined into a new episteme of administered death, with ‘administer’ being understood in its twin senses of ‘to manage’ and ‘to dispense’ — the two characteristic orientations to death in contemporary society. This new episteme quickly displaced traditional values derived predominantly from religious, philosophical, mythological and traditional sources and has advanced far beyond their responsive capacity, as the many interminable debates around issues of bioethics reveal. While this new episteme might enhance the human condition, it also has great potential for the impoverishment of the human spirit, and for the further reduction of human beings to the status of mere components and functions to be administered within medico‐technological systems that are themselves parts of an increasingly globalized economic system. (shrink)

The article explores the inter-relations between episteme, ideology and knowledge in biblical translations and the underlying historical and intellectual questions that emerge. Through four narratives, drawn across differing timelines, this article maps the implications of theological and temporal power. Besides, it is also argued for how translations are sites of transgressions that eventually shape knowledge and impact epistemology. In conclusion, the article argues that Jerome and Wycliffe represent the role of public intellectuals and the dissident lessons of history.

The theoretical explication and conceptualization of the concept of episteme in religious philosophy (Anselm of Canterbury) is carried out; epistemological configurations and specifications of philosophical and theological discourse are revealed (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Anselm of Canterbury’s epistemological discourse is based on his postulated ontology: the ontological configurability of his ideas ranges from the a priori ability to think of God to reflection on his predicates. The consequence of Anselm of Canterbury’s ideas is the idea that in the act of religious (...) faith, God becomes an ontological reality. Within the framework of the article, it is noted that the ideas of D. Bonhoeffer, like many areas of modern religious philosophy, constitute the context of the study and substantiation of the religious episteme. The simultaneity and discreteness of the act of life correlates in this concept with eternal nature of God. The concept of “irreligious Christianity” by the German theologian is a part of the processes of reforming Christian theology that took place in the 20th century. The article contains a conceptual analysis of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and religious consciousness. The role of religious knowledge in the formation of new approaches to personality and religious life is considered. The concept of religious episteme as an object of philosophical and religious analysis is explicated. The interpretive perspective of the concept of religious episteme is presented, the field of variable possibilities in the study of this phenomenon is revealed, its theoretical configurations and key, dominant features are shown. The work includes the analysis of the concept of religious episteme from the scientific and philosophical points of view, from the point of view of theoretical reflection. The problems of religious epistemology are considered on the base of historical and cultural material of approaches and concepts of both medieval and modern religious philosophy. It is concluded that religious epistemology is also a philosophical and methodological reflection on the possibility of comprehending the ultimate foundations of religious being. (shrink)

Objective: In this essay, I will try to track some historical and modern stages of the discussion on the Gettier problem, and point out the interrelations of the questions that this problem raises for epistemologists, with sceptical arguments, and a so-called problem of relevance. Methods: historical analysis, induction, generalization, deduction, discourse, intuition results: Albeit the contextual theories of knowledge, the use of different definitions of knowledge, and the different ways of the uses of knowledge do not resolve all the issues (...) that the sceptic can put forward, but they can be productive in giving clarity to a concept of knowledge for us. On the other hand, our knowledge will always have an element of intuition and subjectivity, however not equating to epistemic luck and probability. Significance novelty: the approach to the context in general, not giving up being a Subject may give us a clarity about the sense of what it means to say – “I know”. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage n'est ni un commentaire ni une explication d'obedience historiciste ou deterministe. Par questionnement, lecture et interpretation, l'auteur a voulu produire une semantique philosophique. La doctrine des idees est ainsi reexaminee a la convergence des problemes du langage, de la science et de la cite (logos, episteme, polis). Elle ne peut plus des lors etre interpretee sous l'hypothese de l' idealisme. Elle se manifeste comme une serie de questions de sens ou s'indique une philosophie de la raison. Partout (...) ou le logos nous porte, c'est la qu'il faut aller, tel en serait le mot d'ordre, mais avec la precision qu'a l'articulation du mythique et du theorique, du tragique et du philosohique, et plus profondement de la deraison et du logos, le rationalisme platonicien n'est fait que de raison. (shrink)

The aim of presented article is the discussion with several theses of Witold Płotka's book Studia z fenomenologii poznania. Transcendentalna filozofia Edmunda Husserla a problem wiedzy [Studies in the Phenomenology of Cognition. Transcendental Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and the Problem of Knowledge]. After a short presentation of its main theses, the article subjects them to criticism. It starts with a observation that Husserl's theory of cognition, as reconstructed by Płotka, assumes the primacy of theoretical reason, which results in two major (...) problems: ignoring the ontological assumptions of cognition as such and its life-world context. The introduction of the latter element into the discussion implies radical reconstruction of the phenomenology of cognition in the direction of the phenomenology of life. (shrink)